172 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



would consider him as a descendant or merely a 

 kinsman of the ape, is that pointed out by Quatre- 

 fages, the upright walk of man. All bodily dif- 

 ferences hinge upon the essential difference be- 

 tween man and brute, and that is the difference 

 of rationality and irrationality. It is first ex- 

 pressed in the development of the cranium, which 

 in man is far greater than in the ape, and thence 

 may be traced throughout the entire bodily 

 structure. The immense jaws, the huge teeth, 

 and the length of arms tell of the purely animal 

 nature of the orang-outang. 



When now we study the different theories based 

 upon comparative morphology we find on con- 

 sulting Kohlbrugge's list that they are about as 

 numerous as the leading writers upon this sub- 

 ject. Hence an imaginary common ancestor to 

 both man and the ape was invented in the ficti- 

 tious "Molchmaus." 



The ape theory has been rejected by many of 

 the most noted evolutionists. The argument of 

 similarity, if it proved anything, would rather 

 favor the school which holds that the ape is de- 

 scended from man. Thus the human hand is 

 more similar to that of the lower apes than to that 

 of the highest anthropoid apes who in this respect 

 would, on the evolutionary hypothesis, be con- 

 sidered as representing a far more advanced stage 

 of evolution than man. This reverse view of evo- 

 lution has, indeed, long ago been seriously ad* 



